Suhena | Hand fan, 2018
Monotype printed on rice paper
Courtesy of the artist and ABRA Gallery
Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe has developed a synthetic, concrete, and minimal visual language based upon the vast and intense relationship between his inidgenous Yanomami community and the landscape that surrounds it in the Venezuelan Amazon. These links, between the realms of the personal and the collective, place his work as a contemporary revision of cosmogony and the Yanomami imaginary.
Hakihiiwe’s works are conceived as an expression of knowledge (natural, medical, and so on) and as the foundation that unites the ancestral with the contemporary in a fragmented time in which past and present coexist, consciously and unconsciously. His references are drawn from signs and symbols found in the body painting, basketry and ritual ceremonies of the Yanomami culture. While these practices are generally associated with the women of the community, Hakihiiwe’s choice and use is a deliberate recovery.
Hahoshi / Tarantula’s ass, 2019
Acrylic on primed paper
Maari Thotho, Bejuco (va) medicinal, 2018
Acrylic on primed paper
Oru parautherimi/ Water snake, 2019
Acrylic on primed paper
Maari Thotho, Bejuco (liana) medicinal, 2018
Acrylic on primed paper